Saturday, June 27, 2009

Because I Don't Have The Time/Energy To Write Anything About Athfest

Michael Jackson died a couple of days ago, and to hear people talk about it, there are two ways of looking at Michael Jackson's life.

1) He was a musical genius, and we will miss him.2) He was a washed-up pedophile.

As for number 1.

That's pretty genius.

As for number 2, a lot of people are using the word 'allegedly,' to describe Michael's checkered past. Let's get this straight once and for all. When your defense is, 'While I may have shared my bed with this boy, and many other 10-year-old boys, I can assure you that nothing sexual ever happened,' even if you're telling the truth, that's still extremely inappropriate.

And you're certainly not innocent.

And if he loved children so much, where were all the little girls?

But that's only half the story. Michael Jackson grew up in a physically abusive household. He watched/heard his father beat the shit out of his mother and his brothers from the time he was born. And when he got a little bit older, he got to experience these beatings first-hand.

The next time you make a joke about all the surgery he had done on his nose, you might want to consider the nose he grew up with looked exactly like his father's.

Ignoring his sister's unproven allegations that she & Michael were sexually abused, during his Jackson 5 days Michael shared hotel rooms with his older brothers while they had sex with girls after their concerts. No one is sure when Michael Jackson has his first sexual experience, but you can be sure he got plenty of offers.

In the movie, Deliver Us From Evil, a documentary about Father Oliver O'Grady, a Catholic priest who sexually abused children in his varous parishes talked candidly and openly about his actions and the motivations behind them.

O'Grady was molested by a priest at the age of 10, as well as his brother. In the movie, he suggests that these early experiences had an effect of eroticizing childhood as a whole. In short, he just finds little kids sexy--or to be less crude, sexual. It's not a reach to suggest that something similar may have happened in Michael Jackson's life.

I'm not looking to villify him, just to better understand him.

Beyond his musical talents, Michael Jackson was a victim of abuse who grew up in a hell that most of us could never imagine. The fact that he wasn't strong enough to break the cycle of abuse, that he endured tremendous suffering as a child only to grow up and inflict a similar suffering on other children, doesn't make him a monster. It just makes his story, and the world we live in, that much sadder.

His life was a tragedy, with plenty to go around for everyone. I hope Michael Jackson is finally at peace, and I hope his suffering has ended.